How popular is the baby name Susan in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Susan.

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Popularity of the baby name Susan


Posts that mention the name Susan

Free katsu for people named Kat and Sue

katsukare

Is your name Kat, Sue, or anything similar (e.g., Katie, Suzy, Katrina, Susan, Katherine, Suzanne)? Do you live in the UK?

If so, you can get a free Katsu-based dish (the Katsu Curry, the Katsu Burger, or the Katsu Carbonara) at participating Banana Tree restaurants from September 22 to 25.

To participate in the promotion, visit your local Banana Tree after 4pm on one of the above dates, purchase a drink of your choice, and present both your ID and your “Big Flavour Club” membership code.

The giveaway celebrates National Katsu Day (Sep. 27) — which was invented by a different UK restaurant several years ago. :)

P.S. The Japanese word katsu — which refers to a piece of meat that has been coated in panko, deep-fried, and cut into strips — is a shortened form of katsuretsu, a transliteration of the English word cutlet.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Koshien katsukare 2016 (25623057670) by Kanesue under CC BY 2.0.

Missouri quadruplets: Adam, Benjamin, Christopher, Dylan

quadruplets and stork

In December of 1999, Susan and Rick Hellebusch of Missouri welcomed quadruplets, all boys.

The babies were born at 30 weeks gestation and weighed less than three pounds each.

What were they named?

Adam, Benjamin, Christopher, and Dylan.

Why? Because Susan and Rick had noticed that the babies were labeled A, B, C, and D on the sonogram. They’d already chosen the name Dylan, so they “decided to start at the top of the alphabet to select the remaining three” names.

The couple went on to have two more babies, daughters named Elizabeth and Maria.

P.S. As a nursing student in the early 2020s, Ben Hellebusch happened to meet one of the neonatal nurses who’d cared for him and his brothers. The nurse still remembered the quads’ alphabetical names, saying: “I thought it was the cutest thing that [their mom] did that.”

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Multiplication (1905) by Gordon Ross

What gave the baby name Miles a boost in 1986?

The characters Gordon, Susan, and baby Miles from the TV series "Sesame Street" (in late 1985)
Gordon, Susan, and Miles from “Sesame Street“

According to the U.S. baby name data, the usage of Miles rose slowly during the first half of the 1980s, then saw a higher-than-expected increase in 1986 specifically:

Boys named MilesBoys named Myles
1988887 [rank: 265th]385 [rank: 464th]
1987835 [rank: 262nd]411 [rank: 434th]
1986777 [rank: 275th]382 [rank: 440th]
1985456 [rank: 397th]213 [rank: 602nd]
1984409 [rank: 408th]162 [rank: 681st]

The spelling Myles saw a similar increase the same year.

Why?

My guess is a character from the children’s TV series Sesame Street, which was “the most-watched program on public television” in the mid-1980s. (Fourteen million people — five million of whom were adults — tuned in to the daily program at least once per week.)

In December of 1985, two of the show’s main characters, married couple Susan and Gordon (played by actors Loretta Long and Roscoe Orman), adopted a baby boy named Miles. He was played by Roscoe Orman’s own 1-year-old son, Miles Orman.

The real Miles continued portraying the fictional Miles on Sesame Street for about eight years. The role was then handed off to child actor Imani Patterson.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Miles?

P.S. A year before joining the cast of Sesame Street, Roscoe Orman played the title character in the movie Willie Dynamite…

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Sesame Street

What popularized the baby name Shelby in the early 1990s?

The character Shelby Eatenton from the movie "Steel Magnolias" (1989)
Shelby from “Steel Magnolias“

According to the U.S. baby name data, usage of the name Shelby increased sharply among baby girls (and moderately among baby boys) from 1989 to 1991:

Girls named ShelbyBoys named Shelby
19929,396 [rank: 34th]453 [rank: 474th]
199110,219† [rank: 33rd]524† [rank: 427th]
19903,517 [rank: 100th]354 [rank: 525th]
19891,203 [rank: 229th]205 [rank: 694th]
1988881 [rank: 284th]184 [rank: 691st]
1987898 [rank: 273rd]176 [rank: 686th]
†Peak usage

That surge of over 6,700 baby girls from 1990 to 1991 was the biggest raw-number increase of the year. (The next-biggest jump was made by Mariah.)

Here’s the popularity graph:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Shelby in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Shelby

Usage was strongest (relatively speaking) in rural western states. In 1991, Shelby ranked 5th among baby girls in Montana, 6th in Oklahoma and Wyoming, 8th in Kansas, 11th in Nebraska, 12th in both of the Dakotas as well as Alaska, and 13th in Utah.

What made the name Shelby so trendy all of a sudden?

I think the answer is a combination of two different influences: a movie character, and a country singer.

The first influence was character Shelby Eatenton from the movie Steel Magnolias, which was released in November of 1989.

Steel Magnolias, set in small-town Louisiana, focused on a group of Southern women — two of whom were Mary Lynn “M’Lynn” Eatenton (played by Sally Field) and her adult daughter Shelby (played by Julia Roberts).

Over the course of the film, Shelby married lawyer Jackson Latcherie and — despite the medical risks posed by her type 1 diabetes — decided to have a child. The baby, a boy, was also named Jackson.

The role earned Roberts her first Academy Award nomination (for Best Supporting Actress).

Steel Magnolias (which also gave boosts to the names Jackson and Mlynn) was adapted from the 1987 stage play of the same name by Robert Harling, who wrote it just months after his sister, Susan, had died of complications from type 1 diabetes.

Harling didn’t want to use real names, so (…) Susan became Shelby, after one of his mother’s cousins. “It’s that Southern thing of using a family name as a first name,” Harling says.

Shelby Lynne album "Sunrise" (1989)
Shelby Lynne album

The second influence was country singer Shelby Lynne, who was born in 1968 (as Shelby Lynn Moorer) and raised in Alabama.

Ten of her singles made Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart. The most successful, “Things Are Tough All Over” [vid], peaked at #23 in January of 1991. Several months later, at the 26th Academy of Country Music Awards, she won the title of “Top New Female Vocalist” over fellow nominees Matraca Berg and Carlene Carter.

The names Shelbylynn and Shelbylyn both debuted in 1991, but, curiously, “Shelbylynne” never popped up in the data.

In an interview she gave toward the beginning of her career, Shelby Lynne was asked about the origin of her first name, which she described as “a guy’s name.” She answered,

I don’t know. My Daddy came up with it. Driving through Shelby County, I think, at one time or another, going through Birmingham or somewhere down there. Who knows, I’m just glad I got the name. There’s not many of us.

(Alabama is one of nine U.S. states with a Shelby County. All nine of these counties were named in honor of early American soldier and politician Isaac Shelby.)

What are your thoughts on the name Shelby? Do you like it better as a boy name or as a girl name?

Sources:

Top image: Screenshot of the trailer for Steel Magnolias

[Latest update: May 2025]